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> Mentions of "natural" like this usually mean objectivity is not in the room. That is a heuristic I like to use, but in this case the author appears to be usi

by roenxi 2y ago

> Mentions of "natural" like this usually mean objectivity is not in the room. That is a heuristic I like to use, but in this case the author appears to be using it in the sense of "shareholders aren't getting a cut" so in this particular article it isn't a problem. The benefit that the article is alluding to isn't that the substance is natural in the abstract but that it is easily available because it is naturally occurring and thus partially bypasses the US system of siphoning cash towards healthcare companies. In context being natural is a specific and fairly plausible benefit.

ttyprintk 2y ago
Yet “natural” is used to ambiguously promote many kinds of things in health and medicine. If you ask “how natural” a particular treatment is, you’ll quickly get outside the scope of the FDA and into corporate politics. If you ask “how effective”, the natural salesmen move onto someone else.
AshamedCaptain 2y ago
> but in this case the author appears to be using it in the sense of "shareholders aren't getting a cut" so in this particular article it isn't a problem That would be exactly the same. "Healthcare companies" always get a cut, no matter how "natural" the substance is, for all definitions of natural that you can think of, because healthcare companies get a cut of everything that is even minimally active, FDA or not. In fact, there are big pharma companies that literally profit from selling water (Boiron, but plenty of others). Even if you define "natural" exactly as "something pharma companies don't currently profit from" (a very misleading definition), that definition is going to be uselessly ephemeral as pharma is sure to profit from it as soon as it becomes minimally popular. Therefore, it is again a useless, diffuse definition that is often used simply to indicate whatever the author fancies today.

by roenxi 2y ago

ttyprintk 2y ago

Yet “natural” is used to ambiguously promote many kinds of things in health and medicine. If you ask “how natural” a particular treatment is, you’ll quickly get outside the scope of the FDA and into corporate politics. If you ask “how effective”, the natural salesmen move onto someone else.

AshamedCaptain 2y ago

> but in this case the author appears to be using it in the sense of "shareholders aren't getting a cut" so in this particular article it isn't a problem That would be exactly the same. "Healthcare companies" always get a cut, no matter how "natural" the substance is, for all definitions of natural that you can think of, because healthcare companies get a cut of everything that is even minimally active, FDA or not. In fact, there are big pharma companies that literally profit from selling water (Boiron, but plenty of others). Even if you define "natural" exactly as "something pharma companies don't currently profit from" (a very misleading definition), that definition is going to be uselessly ephemeral as pharma is sure to profit from it as soon as it becomes minimally popular. Therefore, it is again a useless, diffuse definition that is often used simply to indicate whatever the author fancies today.